I think that's the optimistic take for the future of AI programming. Something like, hire a junior, give them an orientation on using the company AI code assistant. Let them become more productive by having that "AI senior" answer their questions and guide them through their work. Pull Requests still approved by your real senior and mid-level engineers (who also have help from the AI).

But my fear is that what actually happens is that we see our mid-level and senior engineers get even more productive with the help of AI, to the point that juniors are seen as so comparatively unproductive as to not be worth the investment. With this job attrition moving up the experience ladder as AI improves.

Juniors won't be able to properly evaluate the AI generated code, so they won't be able to benefit from it fully. A senior however who can crank out 10x code will be more valuable.

you can hire one junior to do the work of 5 using AI assisted tools

that means positions are gonna be cut.

like IBM said they would